Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

by Jennifer Lauck

  Or perhaps I’ve got it all wrong. Perhaps the truth of Steve and me and our end lies within me. After all, did I have any idea who I was? In living with myself, didn’t I look at a stranger in the mirror everyday? Wasn’t it true that no matter how much I thought I knew who I was, I didn’t; I couldn’t?

  WHEN I MET Steve, it was 1987. He was twenty-seven years old and I was twenty-four.

  Steve was a tall, good-looking guy with dark hair and mediumblue eyes that gave off a metallic spark when he smiled. He had a good sense of humor and could always make me laugh. Steve was also a part-time student, just finishing his degree, and for money, he worked for a company that auctioned collectable cars.

  His last name was Dorsey and I always called him the Dors-man.

  The Dors-man grew up in the Spokane Valley and lived in the same house nearly all his life. His parents were quiet people who kept to themselves, and nothing, other than the weather and the seasons and time, changed in their lives. Steve’s mom was a cake decorator. Steve’s dad repaired tractor engines. He had a younger sister. Steve was the oldest.

  In our early days together, I worked as reporter for an ABC station in town and covered hard news—murders, drug busts, fires. It was good work—exciting and a little dangerous too—but at the end of the day, telling stories that had no happy ending made me tired. Human suffering wore me down.

  Eventually, I took a job in Portland, Oregon, at another ABC station and Steve found a job with an auction company nearby.

  Six years into each other, we got married. We would both agree this was an odd decision, considering our proclivity toward tension, which had us bickering most of the time.

  We had this attraction—a live wire of energy ran between us—and arguing amped up the charge. I suppose we were addicted to each other or to the tension of our connection.

  Once married, with the idea that perhaps we would start a family, I stopped working in TV and Steve and I bought an old house on a street that straddled the line between two neighborhoods called Rose City and Hollywood.

  IT WAS A Sunday afternoon in 1994 and we had spent ten hours painting the living room a shade that tried to be linen yellow but looked—to me—more like lemon. Steve was in coveralls and splattered with the disappointing paint that made me think of preschool.

  I wore jeans and an old work shirt.

  I took a stand against the color.

  Steve insisted it was fine.

  I wanted to change it.

  He wanted to leave it.

  I pushed.

  He shoved.

  After three rounds, I dropped my end of the argument and dissolved into tears.

  “I can’t believe we are arguing over paint,” I yelled through my tears. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I never wanted to move into this ramshackle house to begin with.”

  Steve threw his hands up over his head and paced the room while he yelled at the walls.

  “Oh, great, here we go again. Now you don’t want to live here, now you didn’t want to move. Now it’s all my fault since it was my idea to buy the damn house.”

  My old dog, Carmel, was on the bed between us, hunched low with her snout on her paws. Her slow brown eyes shifted from Steve to me.

  “Oh Steve, shut up.”

  Carmel shifted her gaze over to Steve.

  “Shut up! Are you telling me to shut up? ”

  “Yes, Jesus! Shut up! I’m crying here! What kind of man yells at his wife while she is crying? ”

  “I get it, I get it now. You don’t think I’m a good enough man. Now it’s just not about the house, it’s about being my wife. Just admit it, Jennifer. You didn’t want to move into this house and you didn’t want to get married.”

  “Would you just shut up, Steve? Stop yelling at me. I can’t think.”

  Carmel jumped off the bed and nosed her way into the closet. In the dark and quiet place, she settled in and listened to us scream.

  IN THERAPY, THEY say that couples usually have one core issue they argue about. This was our fight. I was ambivalent about my life choices, which included being married and moving into an old house that needed years of hard work. I was ambivalent about most things. Absolute certainty belonged to others but I had not discovered that quality within myself. Steve, whose middle name might as well have been “confident,” just happened to be in the mix of my story of uncertainty.

  Steve took my ambivalence personally. He would blame himself, as if he were responsible for my happiness.

  A therapy session between us might go like this:

  Therapist: What Jennifer is saying, Steve, is that she feels uncertain and even lost a great deal of the time. How does that make you feel?

  Steve: Well, that’s bullshit. Look at her, she’s confident. She knows what she wants. She makes decisions. Jennifer is tough and strong. She’s a real go-getter.

  Therapist: Are you sure that is who Jennifer is? Are you seeing the real Jennifer or your image of Jennifer?

  Steve: (Tosses a dirty look at Jennifer since he didn’t want to do therapy in the first place. He shifts in his chair. He crosses one leg over the other.)

  Therapist: (Observes tension between couple and defensive posture of Steve.) Let’s try a different approach. Steve, why don’t you describe your wife.

  Steve: I don’t get it.

  Therapist: As if she isn’t here. Just tell me who you think Jennifer is.

  Steve: Well, that’s easy. First, she is a woman, obviously. She’s tall, great legs, good cook, confident, hardworking. She’s my wife. We have two kids. She’s smart. Really smart.

  Jennifer: (Laughs.)

  Steve: What? It’s true. You’re smart. Hell, you’re smarter than me.

  Jennifer: Don’t put yourself down. You’re always putting yourself down.

  Steve: I don’t always put myself down.

  Jennifer: You do too. He does.

  Therapist: (Hands up.) Okay, hold on. Let’s stay on Steve and the question.

  Steve: (Frowns, shakes his head. Doesn’t remember question.)

  Therapist: What else do you see when you look at Jennifer?

  Jennifer: (Restless with therapist. Thinks he is a hack.) The dark stuff, Steve. He wants to know the deeper things. What pisses you off about me?

  Steve: (Nods, grateful for the translation.)

  Therapist: (Gives Jennifer a small nod too. Makes a note on his pad, Jennifer = controlling.)

  Steve: (Shifts in his chair, looks at ground. Passes glance over to Jennifer.) Are you sure you want to hear it, Jen? Do you really want to go there?

  Jennifer: You’re not telling me, you’re telling him. Tell him. Who am I?

  Therapist: (Looks at Jennifer for a long moment. Considers asking her to leave room.)

  Steve: (Takes a deep breath and rubs his face.) Well, I guess I would say Jennifer is one of those people, you know, she’s sad.

  Therapist: (Perks up again, makes notes.) Can you tell me more? Can you tell me more about this sadness you see?

  Steve: (Looks at Jennifer with more concern.)

  Jennifer: (Nods as if Steve should continue.)

  Steve: (Clears his throat and coughs into his fist.) Well, when Jennifer gets sad, it’s hard. It’s like she turns around and disappears—even though she’s right in front of me.

  Therapist: (Leans forward in chair.) How does that make you feel?

  Steve: (Looks at therapist—hard—looks at Jennifer, looks at his own shoes, looks at time on watch. Thinks about how this session is costing him two hundred and fifty bucks.) Well, I guess I want to pull her out of wherever she goes, out of her sadness—I want to be like the guy who saves the day—you know, the hero who rides in on a horse. I guess I just want to be the one who makes Jennifer happy.

  Therapist: (Takes furious notes, both congratulating himself on a job well done and also getting ready to ask Steve about his childhood and his relationship to his own mother.)

  Jennifer: (Crying.)

  Steve: (Furious
with himself. Thinking, Great, now I’ve made her cry.)

  AFTER ELEVEN YEARS together and a good amount of therapy, Steve didn’t really want to look at his need to rescue me and to take it so personally. He didn’t want to talk about his mother and his past either. For Steve, childhood belonged back in childhood. He was from Spokane, for heaven’s sake. No one did therapy in Spokane.

  Steve and I went on with our lives, we argued about paint chips, movies, and where to eat dinner. I continued to feel lost and ambivalent, and I continued to go away, deep into myself—after all I was writing a memoir. And Steve continued to believe that I was going away from him, that I didn’t want to be with him or our children. He felt he had failed me.

  In the end, when I left our marriage, I told him I just had to keep looking for that missing something.

  “Looking for what?” Steve would always ask. “What are you looking for, Jen?”

  EIGHTEEN

  THE JOURNEY

  WHEN HE WAS in town, Steve stayed in the house overnight and I slept at my office, a few blocks away. When he was out of town, I’d sleep in the basement.

  This was not an arrangement he created. I was the one to put myself on the outside and to put Steve on the inside with our kids. I cast myself out as the failure.

  On the nights I was away from my home, the routine, and the children, I was so unhappy, I’d curl up into a fetal position and cry for the physical pain I felt in missing my own children.

  “Come home, Jen,” Steve would say, but I had to batter myself. My mind fed me lines of failure that buried me deeper and deeper still. “You’re trash. You blew it. It’s all your fault.”

  I cried until I passed out.

  BEFORE, IT HAD been Carmel who saved my life. But since Carmel had died of old age—a few years earlier—the task of calling me out of my habitual loop of self-torment fell to Spencer.

  While I walked him to school, pretending all was well, Spencer tugged on my hand. “Mom,” he said, “I can’t find you.”

  We were on the way to his second-grade classroom. His teacher, Beth, stood at the door and shook hands with another child. We were next.

  I did a quick U-turn and maneuvered into a stairwell. I collapsed on the sticky, dirty stairs and held his upper arms. I looked into his dark chocolate eyes. “What do you mean, Sweets? ” I asked.

  “I look for you, at night. I go through the house and you’re not anywhere.”

  Spencer, seven years old, had dark, shining hair cut in the shape of a bowl and a long, angular face.

  “What about Jo?” I asked. “Is she awake at night too?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “You know Jo. She’s always so happy.” The school bell rang but we didn’t move off the steps. I chewed the edge of my lip. How to fit this huge news into a small headline? “Well, Sweetie, Dad and I aren’t getting along so great and I’ve been sleeping at my office,” I finally admitted. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

  I smoothed his hair and Spencer looked relieved. A part of him knew.

  “I want to sleep where you sleep,” he said. “Can I come to your office too?”

  His longing, so pure and raw, made me so sad. Hadn’t I learned that children know everything, feel everything?

  I hugged him close and promised that yes, he could, but I would also go to work and find a place of my own. “I’ll find a house,” I said. “I’ll make a place for us to be together.”

  “When?” he asked.

  “Right now,” I said. “Today.”

  “Good,” he said.

  I FOUND A house just a few blocks from Steve, made a down payment, and created a new home. I bought all new things so moving was like a party for the kids—a time of expansion—and not a funeral march through divorce.

  I circled tight around their routine and recreated myself around their needs.

  Jo was just two and a half. Spencer neared eight.

  Jo had her art projects and Mommy and Me classes. Spence had school and play dates. We had dinnertime and reading time and bedtime. Mundane activities like brushing teeth, taking baths, and folding clothes were my sanity. I buried myself in their schedule as if in a cave—belowground.

  Lovers entered and exited. These men started as momentary comfort and became monotonous and suffocating. I seemed to attract a long line of losers who were needy, clingy, and even abusive. I found a poignant passage by Nor Hall, who wrote The Moon and the Virgin, and with a Sharpie pen I transcribed the words on the wall over my bed:The virgin forest is not barren or unfertilized but rather a place that is especially fruitful and has multiplied because it has taken life into itself and transformed it, giving birth naturally and taking dead things back to be recycled. It is virgin because it is unexploited, not in man’s control.

  The passage stood as a warning to all lovers: You are temporary! Do not settle in.

  My internal state became that of a virgin.

  This began what some might call the spiritual journey. That is, the call to the spirit within—or perhaps the soul of a person—or the soul of everything. I now entered the deepest part of the quest toward the elusive and the unknown.

  This is when I discovered meditation and a teacher of meditation named Tylanni Drolma.

  TYLANNI DROLMA. TYLANNI. While I didn’t know what her name meant, the sound of it contained worlds unknown. At first I found a series of meditation tapes she had recorded called Awaken from Fear. I listened to these tapes—over and over again—not just for the meditation she offered but also for the story she told of her life. Tylanni had traveled through India and Tibet, had been a nun in the Tibetan tradition of Buddhism and then went on to marry—not once, but twice—and had several children.

  I thought, Here’s a woman who has traveled deep into the complexities of marriage and motherhood and even into spirituality. I needed such a guide at this stage of my own life.

  I ordered her book titled Illusion’s Wake Up Call and when it arrived, paged directly to the center to find a photo of Tylanni Drolma as a young woman. Her hair had been shaved—traditional for someone who had taken the vows of a nun. She held a bundle of wool blankets. As I stared into this grainy image, my body was covered with chills. I told myself I had to speak to her.

  I learned, via Internet research, that Tylanni lived in Canada. She ran a retreat center called The Pure Land.

  The name itself felt mysterious and vast—like the sea. I was speechless and also felt called to action.

  I wrote a quick email: “I read your book. I wanted to ask how you were able to maintain a spiritual life and be a mother.”

  Within hours, Tylanni typed a return email. “Come to Canada, perhaps take the Tara retreat, and we shall talk about this.”

  Her message was so surprising and yet also felt so important—although I had no inkling why. All I could do—as if something larger than myself was driving forward momentum—was to arrange childcare, book a ticket, and make the trip.

  TO THE AVERAGE city dweller, getting to The Pure Land is not easy. You have to take a plane to Calgary and a puddle jumper to Golden (and keep hold of the barf bag because it’s a brutal, bumpy flight). Next, you make an hour trek to Jasper and another hour trip on unpaved roads. Make a hard right and cut through raw forestland on a one-way double-track trail. Be careful of the huge boulders, don’t careen your rig into the creek, and keep your eyes on the horizon—in search of silk prayer flags.

  When you get to The Pure Land (if you get there), know that you are someone who wanted to get there. It takes serious focus to make that journey, and it takes serious commitment to stay.

  When I arrived that first time, I thought to myself, what the hell am I doing here?

  My only religious training—which I had walked away from—was in the Catholic Church. In my twenties, with my mean first husband, I had dipped into the vat of ecstatic Christianity and accepted Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, into my heart. I just loved that phrase—Jesuschristourlordandsavior. When I said it, ov
er and over again, it felt like being born. Eventually I made my way back to the more subdued and stern Catholics where there were absolutes like: If you do bad things you burn in hell and God is up there and we are down here. I had my first marriage annulled by a Catholic council, just to play by the rules, and even though I didn’t go to church (the whole perspective on women bummed me out), I did consider myself to be a faithful person. I believed in forces bigger than myself. I believed in divine intervention. I could count off several moments in my own life where I felt the power of Grace. But my faith was my business. Religion felt very personal.

  I suppose I could say that I arrived at The Pure Land with an open heart. I was ready to believe I had come for a divine reason that would be revealed. But it also fair to say, on the issue of religion, I was skeptical too.

  THE PURE LAND had rolling hills, open meadows, a few yurts, and a lean-to style kitchen built among the leaning trunks of aspen and pines. Upon arrival, I was assigned to a dusty tent, ate a bit of wilted salad, and found my way to the first teaching.

  In hiking boots, I clomped up a gravel road that ended at the double doors of a canvas yurt.

  Inside, the air was thick with incense and candles burned around a circular altar where a dozen statues of the same beautiful jade green woman were arranged in a circle. On the lattice walls, there were silk paintings of Asian men and women dancing, sitting cross-legged, and even making love. All I had ever seen were statues of a pious Mary, head bowed in contemplative sorrow, and Christ ratcheted to a cross, his face distorted in eternal pain. I found myself staring at the Tibetan interpretation of the Divinity with a voyeur’s curiosity.

  At the back of the yurt, the Tylanni Drolma sat on a pile of cushions and sheep skins. I stopped looking around and stared at her.